


With a New Person in a Distant City

by orphan_account



Category: due South
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, M/M, One Night Stand, Post-Call of the Wild, Travel, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray's vacations became sort of pathetic, after Stella.  Maybe San Antonio will turn the tide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a New Person in a Distant City

**Author's Note:**

> [Now there's a sequel of sorts, linked at the bottom of the story.]
> 
> I really wanted to tag this ambiguously, but then decided that Victoria is enough of a hot-button character that I should warn for her as I would warn for anything harmful or unpleasant. I tagged Stella's father as "orginal" because all I know about Stella's parents from the show is that she had them and that they were apparently "Gold Coast" to one degree or another. And, although there are references to Ray and Stella as a couple, it's all in the past and there aren't any explicit sexual hijinx, so I didn't tag it as Ray/Stella. I'm not sure if that was the correct choice. Tags confuse me sometimes.

Ray knew that it was kind of pathetic, what he liked to do with his vacation, after Stella. He and Stella used to go on a weeklong vacation, once a year. It was her parents’ idea, and for the first few years, they bankrolled it, too. About eight months after they got married, Stella’s mom and dad had them over for dinner. Started talking about how they, Ray and Stella, should take a trip for their anniversary, which got Ray’s back up so much that his spine was probably the highest point in the state of Illinois. George and Louise knew the Kowalskis couldn’t possibly afford a trip. 

Louise realized that something was wrong and said to George, with just the right amount of lightness in her voice, “Just skip to the end this time, please?” Because it turned out that the trip, which George had been describing as absolutely necessary to a young couple’s happiness, was going to be an anniversary present from George and Louise to Ray and Stella. And suddenly Ray relaxed, because maybe normally Stella’s parents giving them something extravagant and unnecessary would be only slightly better than giving them something extravagant and necessary, but the way George and Louise talked about their own anniversary trips made it sound like they had decided that Ray and Stella were a solid couple. They were telling them about it four months early for planning purposes. They were supposed to pick a city and go. 

They went to San Diego. Then Miami. Then Philadelphia. Then Charleston. Then they could afford to pay for their own trips (and that was a real nice conversation to have with George, telling him that they’d take care of their own trip that year; George broke out the cigars and the Scotch he’d previously only poured for Ray when Ray got a citation). So, after that, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston, Santa Fe and New Orleans. 

The twelfth trip would’ve been Stella, by herself, to Reno if their lives had been a 1930s movie. As it was, the divorce didn’t involve any phony out of state residences. Ray spent his next vacation finding an apartment. Then he went to Mexico. Then he went to Canada. He came home alone both times. 

It was about a year before he went on his next vacation, after he returned from not finding the Hand of Franklin and losing Fraser to the frozen north (the man was so happy up there it was impossible for Ray to even think about asking him if he’d be interested in returning to Chicago, so happy that Ray couldn’t even tell him how much he needed Fraser to want to come back to Chicago with him, and why, because he’d been on both sides of emotional blackmail before and didn’t want to do it again). 

So now it had been two years since the Canada vacation. Last year he went to New York. Now it was San Antonio. He wasn't really sure why he picked San Antonio. Just…looked like a nice city. Had stuff to do during the day and a reasonably lively nightlife. Which was what he really wanted. To meet someone nice who’d keep him company for a couple of nights while he was on vacation and then he could go back to Chicago and celibately pine for Fraser. 

San Antonio, in April, was nice. Flowers everywhere, the Alamo across from his hotel room, and Riverwalk, which looked suspiciously like a lot of other downtown districts he’d been to. Same stores, only on a canal. He decided to have dinner in the rotating restaurant in the Space Needle knockoff the city’d built for their own World’s Fair.  The Hemisfair.  Jesus. 

A guy who smiled politely but gave off a kind of creepy serial killer vibe seated him. His waitress, though, she seemed nice, with her brightly whitened professional smile. Absolutely gorgeous, with long curly hair, creamy olive skin, eyes like the grayest of green seas. Her name tag labeled her: Jane. Ray ordered a glass of cabernet. “Excellent choice,” she told him.

He grinned at her. “You say that to everyone,” he said. She smiled back at him, a little more sincerely and less professionally. “If I asked you to run down to the Piggly Wiggly and get me a bottle of Boone’s Farm, you’d have been all, ‘Sir is a man of refined and elegant taste’.” 

She actually laughed. “Oh,” she said appreciatively, “they sure sat you in the right section.” 

And they actually conversed; she was having a slow night and he was dining alone and, for such a fleeting acquaintanceship, they really clicked. She told him she was an hour away from getting her pilot’s license. “But not this hour,” she said with a smile when he elaborately looked at his watch. 

“Look,” he said as he finished off his second drink of the night, an after-dinner cognac, “I am in no way making a statement about your professionalism here, but if you’d like to get together and talk, I’m staying at the Menger. My name’s Ray Kowalski.” 

She stiffened and looked at him, her face suddenly very serious.

“Oh, hey, look I’m sorry,” Ray quickly apologized. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Just that we seemed to be getting along, and if you wanted to get in touch with me, that’s how you could reach me. Not that you would. I mean, why would you? You must get sleazy customers hitting on you all the time and that was seriously uncool of me. I’m really sorry.” 

“It’s all right,” she said, smiling again. Ray didn’t say anything more, even when she brought his bill. He tipped her exactly twenty percent: going rate, nothing to imply anything at all. He went back to his hotel and sat at the window, staring at the Alamo and wondering if he could sink any lower. 

And then the phone rang. It was Jane, down in the lobby. He threw on some decent clothes and met her, escorted her down the hall to the bar where, it was rumored, Teddy Roosevelt had recruited Rough Riders. 

Jane wiggled slightly on the chair when he told her that. She was thin, but still the chair creaked and shook under her. “They haven’t replaced the chairs since,” she said. Ray laughed more than he needed to at that, but he was relieved she’d shown up. 

They had martinis. “I thought everything was bigger in Texas,” Ray said, looking at their glasses. 

Jane eyed hers professionally. “Standard size,” she said. She took a sip, coughed a little and then grinned. “Definitely not watered down.” 

“I guess the bar I go to doesn’t do standard,” Ray said. 

“In Chicago?”

“The accent, right?” 

“Pretty much,” she said and they laughed because it was all so easy, so much fun. Ray told her some cop stories. Jane told him she was worried about getting her pilot’s license; she never did well on exams. He told her encouraging stories about exams he had nearly failed but managed to pass. They laughed a lot. They closed the bar and Jane invited herself up to his room. Ray accepted. 

“You really are a cop” she giggled when she saw how he entered his room. Even slightly gone on multiple drinks, he was cautious, checking all entry/exit points. 

“Yep. I only made up like half those stories I told you in the bar,” he said. She tumbled him to the bed. “You have the right to remain silent,” she said solemnly. 

“I’d better,” he whispered to her. “These walls…like paper.” 

“Then we’ll do this real quiet-like,” she said, and kissed him. Her mouth was hot, so hot on his. He felt like he had an instant fever. His thoughts and actions became disconnected. She placed his mouth on her hand, encouraged him to suck on her fingers. When he did, her eyes closed and her head tilted back. 

There were other things that happened in the self-imposed silence of his room. Hands directed his hands, his head, his mouth, eventually his cock, where she wanted them to go. And every place she wanted him to touch, to taste, to smell was just as hot as her mouth. It was all heat and moisture, but also nearly frictionless for all that. 

Toward dawn, they took a shower together, her hair plastered against her head, her mascara running. They had to turn on the bathroom light; it was the brightest and least flattering light they’d seen each other in. She was still gorgeous. Ray was…afraid to think about how he looked. 

They napped, then she got up around nine. She drew the blackout curtains before Ray fully woke up. She brewed them coffee. 

“So…Chicago cop?” she said, more of a prompt than a question since they'd covered that ground extensively. 

“Yep.” 

“Callahan’s?” 

“Yeah,” Ray said, surprised. “How’d you know which bar serves outsized martinis? You know anyone on the force?” 

She sipped her coffee. “Lived in Chicago awhile. Waitresses hear things. Callahan’s supposed to be a good gig,” she said. She shot him a sly grin. “If you don’t mind cops hitting on you.” 

Ray gave her a hangdog look. “I’m guessing everyone hits on you.” 

She shrugged. “When I was there, oh, mid-nineties or so, there were all these crazy stories about a Mountie.” 

Ray tried not to react. “That so?” 

“Yeah. Ran around town with a local cop or two, solving crimes. Usually wearing the full dress uniform, you know, the red one.” 

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Heard about that. Kind of hard to miss.” 

She laughed again, and there was an oddly brittle quality to her laughter. “Just reading the papers, watching the news.” 

Ray made an affirmative grunt. Jane reached over to tousle his hair affectionately. “You really aren’t a morning person, are you?” 

“Not really,” Ray said. He wasn’t about to tell Jane that he was suddenly thinking about Fraser, about how for two years now Fraser asked him if he’d spend his vacation up in Medicine Hat and for two years now Ray said no because going to distant cities and picking up people he’d never hear from again was less painfully pathetic than spending a week being around Fraser, Fraser who would never let them lose touch with one another. 

“I heard he was back in Canada. You know anything about that?” Jane asked. Shit, she was persistent. Maybe she’d met Fraser, had a little crush she wanted to follow up on. 

“Nah,” Ray said. “I met him a couple of times. Real good-looking. Women hanging off his arm. Wouldn’t give ‘em the time of day, mostly.” 

“Strange,” she said. Ray just nodded. If both of them weren’t at least somewhat opportunistic about that kind of thing, they’d hardly be having coffee in his hotel room on twelve hours’ acquaintance. “Well, I’d better go,” Jane said. She wrote something down on a pad next to the hotel phone. “In case you get lonely again,” she said. And left. 

Ray did some more sight-seeing. Alone. The night with Jane had been oddly perfect, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to call her. There was that whole weird thing about her time in Chicago, bringing up Fraser like that. It made Ray think about things, about how Fraser had looked when Ray went back to Chicago. About how he sounded when he asked Ray to come visit him. 

On his last night in San Antonio, Ray went to the Alamodome for a Spurs game. Last chance to see, at least before the Spurs moved across town. Their one home game for when he was in town was against the Raptors. A local beauty queen did a swell job on “O Canada.” Ray found himself mouthing the words. He drank a lot during the game. 

When he left the arena, he looked up and saw the Hemisfair above him. He wondered if Jane was working that shift. He pulled out his cell phone and the piece of paper with her number on it. He knew he probably shouldn’t call when he’d been drinking, when he’d probably get voicemail, but maybe fortune really did favor the bold as his fortune cookies sometimes told him.

He punched some numbers on his keypad. He was relieved when the line got picked up after two rings. Real person, not a machine. He listened to the standard, if rather long, greeting, staring up at what stars he could see deep in the heart of Texas. 

“Yeah, Frase, it’s Ray,” he said when Fraser finally stopped giving the name of the detachment and all the official greetings, in French and English. 

“Ray,” Fraser said, his voice happy. “I’m glad to hear from you. Are you enjoying San Antonio?” 

Ray looked back down to all the people streaming around him, then back up to the Hemisfair. “Not as much as I’d probably like Medicine Hat,” he said. Probably no one else would’ve noticed that Fraser gave a weird little inhale-exhale gasp when he heard that. 

“Is that so, Ray?” Fraser said, sounding perfectly fine, perfectly calm. 

“It is so, Fraser,” Ray said. 

“So why not come to Medicine Hat on your next vacation?” Fraser asked. Ray wondered if it was his own hope he was hearing in Fraser’s voice. 

“Nah,” Ray said. But he didn’t want to be cruel, so he quickly added, “I thought I’d just start going up there tonight, get there sometime tomorrow maybe. Finish _this_ vacation in Medicine Hat.” 

“I’d be…very happy if you were to do that, Ray,” Fraser said. So Ray did it. 

It turned out Medicine Hat was his kind of place, with his kind of people. Fraser, sure, but everyone, really. After visiting Medicine Hat, being greeted at the airport with a hearty hug that was really easy to turn into a passionate kiss, Ray hardly went back to Chicago at all. Just enough to sign some paperwork, get rid of some stuff, say goodbye to a few people. He settled in to Medicine Hat quite well. Started studying to get his pilot’s license. Nearly everyone in town had one. He wondered briefly if Jane had hers. He expected she did. She seemed like the type who always got what she wanted. Lately, Ray felt like he himself had become one of that elect tribe. Finally.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A More Distant Place](https://archiveofourown.org/works/694036) by [orphan_account](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account)




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